


Expendable

by Relvetica



Series: Wolves [13]
Category: Fargo (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:45:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relvetica/pseuds/Relvetica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Numbers checked the magazine and the safety on his gun and nodded, and Wrench reached into the backseat as Numbers got out and retrieved his ice axe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expendable

Wrench came out of the bathroom, still briskly rubbing a towel over his hair, to find Numbers sitting on the foot of his bed and gazing intently at the television. Wrench came around to see what he was watching. There was a picture of some politician in the corner as a news anchor recited her report to the camera.

He let the towel drape over his shoulders and clapped his hands together lightly. When Numbers glanced up at him, Wrench frowned and said, captioning.

Numbers frowned back. He glanced at the television again, and picked up the remote where it had been on the bed and tossed it to him. Wrench didn't even have to go through any menus to find the captioning options; there was a button devoted to it right there. Numbers had fallen out of that habit just as quickly as he'd fallen into it, apparently.

Captioning for live feeds always lagged pretty badly, so he tried to catch what it was that had had Numbers so transfixed. Some bribery scandal. It might have been related to them, but it wasn't related to _them_ ; he gave Numbers a funny look, but Numbers was still staring at the screen. He stepped closer to his line of sight and asked, are you ready to go?

We need to be there at noon, Numbers said.

Yes, Wrench said. We need to leave soon.

Numbers twisted around to look at the clock, and then back up at Wrench in disbelief. Three hours? he asked. Where is it, M-A-R-S?

Wrench shrugged. Middle of the woods, he said. Somewhere. He picked up the map from his own bed where he'd been squinting at it earlier. 

This is stupid, Numbers said.

Wrench was inclined to agree -- it had been a two hour drive after a long meeting last night just to get here -- but there wasn't anything they could do about it at this point. He shrugged, palms up. Okay, Numbers said, you finish dressing and we leave. He wasn't looking at Wrench anymore by the time he finished the sentence; he was watching the news again, brows furrowed.

Wrench was combing his hair when Numbers suddenly turned away from the television to look at him again. Numbers hooked two fingers and waved them in a brief circle over his mouth and brought his hand down to rap on his other, mirroring the handshape, making the question almost look like a single word. Is lipreading hard?

Wrench blinked at him in the mirror. For what? he asked. TV?

Numbers gestured around himself: anything.

Wrench raised an eyebrow. Lipreading was a headache on a good day. Some people were pretty good at it; Wrench wasn't particularly, but he got by. He hesitated, and he said, it's not perfect.

Numbers nodded, and he stood up and turned the television off.

\---

It wasn't just a long drive to the given location: it was a boring one. It was a straight line along the interstate until an abrupt left turn took them another ten miles along a road that was barely a parting in the trees. Numbers had fallen asleep at some point, but the rocky approach to the seemingly abandoned semi-trailer in the woods had him rubbing his eyes by the time Wrench parked the car.

Their backup came out of the cab with his hands up and empty and gestured that they were clear; Numbers checked the magazine and the safety on his gun and nodded, and Wrench reached into the backseat as Numbers got out and retrieved his ice axe. He took a moment to stretch his legs before he slung the axe over his shoulder and slowly walked over to join Numbers, behind him and slightly to the side. Their guy had a hard time keeping his eyes on Numbers after that.

Eventually Numbers turned briskly to Wrench as the man retreated to his own car, which Wrench could see parked farther along in the trees. Two men, Numbers said, gesturing to the trailer. Third man, we don't know where he is. They do. All three -- he turned an open palm down and thrust a curled forefinger underneath it.

That sign wasn't correct; Numbers had essentially made it up. But Wrench liked it and let him continue to use it: expendable.

The syndicate liked to dispatch them for interrogations primarily because Numbers was really good at them, and together they created an atmosphere that disquieted people, including most of the syndicate. They had a routine that approached good cop/bad cop, but it treaded closer to reasonable-seeming sadist/silent and still thug. That was how they usually played it, but Wrench's legs ached from sitting in the car for too long. As Numbers took his place in a chair left sitting in front of the two the men were bound to, Wrench started pacing the length of the trailer, the axe dangling carelessly from one hand. The men glanced back at him nervously from time to time -- his footfalls were heavy and he was sure they were loud -- but Numbers called their attention back each time.

Wrench had purchased the ice axe in a sporting supply store not long after he'd hesitantly settled in North Dakota; he hadn't really moved there intentionally so much as he'd realized that if he kept driving he'd end up in Canada, so he'd stopped. He'd had vague intentions of taking up ice fishing, but he learned afterward that a pick wasn't really a good way to go about that. They were supposed to be used for mountain-climbing. That was okay; he'd found a good use for it eventually.

It hadn't started snowing yet, but it was cold out, and so whoever had set up this little dungeon had included a space heater. It had felt good when they'd first come in, but Wrench was hot and irritable within a few minutes. He kept an eye on Numbers, waiting for any cues. Numbers was looking back and forth between the two men as they all talked, appraising them. Wrench continued to pace.

He wondered what Numbers told his girlfriend when he left town on short notice like this. It wasn't his business, but he knew he'd have a hard time explaining his sudden long absences if he'd had anyone to explain them to. He didn't even know what Numbers and his girlfriend did when he _was_ home, the obvious aside. Watched television without captions, he supposed.

Numbers glanced up at him, affirming he had Wrench's attention, and then back at the two men in front of him in turn. After a moment, he very slightly inclined his head toward the man to his right. This was the one more likely to give. Wrench slowed his pace to stride up behind the man on the left, lifted the axe into a backswing, and drove the pick-end through the side of his skull.

He could feel the other man's scream echo in the trailer through the soles of his boots. Numbers hadn't jumped either at the strike or this, but his face had gone still, as though that hadn't quite been what he'd expected Wrench to do. Wrench didn't know what he _had_ been expecting. He pulled back on the axe with nearly equal force to remove it, leaving the man's head at a grotesque angle on his neck where he remained strapped to the chair. He wiped the pick on the corpse's thigh and returned, inexorably, to his pacing. The remaining man stared after him, and Numbers turned his head back to himself with both hands, gentle on the sides of his face.

The interview became brisk after that, Numbers seemingly repeating things the man said back to him, either testing them for accuracy or committing them to memory. He wasn't going to need further help from Wrench at this point, but Wrench kept his eyes on him anyway to watch the inevitable wind-down. The man's shaking shoulders turning to frantic struggling, and Numbers eventually stood up and pulled his gun out from beneath his coat. He said something Wrench didn't catch, flicked the safety off, and shot the man in the face.

He'd had the consideration to wait until Wrench had been at one of the far sides of the trailer. Wrench stopped his pacing, and the two surveyed the damage with grim stillness. Numbers reholstered his gun and signed, I am so tired.

Wrench set the head of the axe on the floor. Why are _you_ tired? he asked. I'm the one driving.

You weren't on the phone to Fargo all night.

Wrench huffed. Those weren't all business calls, right?

Numbers had started going through the coat pockets of the man he'd just killed, but he stopped and frowned at him for a long moment. He finally said, I wasn't calling for pizza.

Wrench regretted the implied accusation as soon as he'd made it, but Numbers didn't seem to have understood it anyway. He wiped sweat off his forehead and signed a quick 'sorry.'

Numbers was still frowning. He said, you were awake when I went to bed. That video game.

I like it, Wrench said.

You _should_ be tired, Numbers said.

Wrench shrugged. I'm younger than you, he said.

It was possibly the brattiest thing he could have come up with there, but Numbers didn't rise to the bait. It's weird how much you play it, he said. He found the man's wallet and opened it briefly, picking out its identification cards. It's only one game, right? he asked. He mimed something ticking back and forth as it moved down with the dead man's social security card.

T-E-T-R-I-S, Wrench spelled.

Why play it so much suddenly?

Wrench shook his head and looked down at his boots. There was blood on them. He signed, bored.

That seemed to give Numbers pause on his slightly messier search for the other's man's ID. He looked at Wrench with his head cocked, an eerie echo of the corpse in front of him.

It's hot in here, Wrench said. I'm going outside.

You will come back, Numbers said. I'm not doing this by myself.

One minute, Wrench said. He gripped the trailer door's handle and hauled it up one handed, hopping out and letting it fall shut behind him.

The chill was very sudden in his sweaty hair, but it was a relief after the heat and darkness of the trailer. It was overcast, making the light that filtered down through the trees less harsh than it could have been. He tried to wipe his boots on the dead leaves, but that only made the blood smear.

Something threw his balance off very abruptly. He stumbled sharply and fell onto his side, somehow managing not to collide with the ice axe on his way down. 

Later he would think that he recalled being relieved: he had been increasingly worried about what was going to happen when his family was located after this job inevitably killed him, and he'd prefer that the death itself be as unironic as possible. But he wouldn't really remember thinking that. He didn't remember much of anything immediately after that.


End file.
